Littell's Living Age/Volume 173/Issue 2244/The New Marriage Bill

- The attorney-general’s bill for amending the law respecting the attendance of registrars at marriages in Nonconformist places of worship has now been published. It proposes to extend to Dissenting ministers the power of solemnizing marriages without the presence of a registrar, which is now possessed by clergymen in orders recognized by the Church of England and by Quakers and Jews. The proposed privileges are to be confined to those denominations who, in the opinion of the registrar-general, have a central organization sufficient for maintaining discipline among their ministers. A large number of the numerous sects, which are known even by name to few persons outside the registrar-general’s office, would be excluded by this last provision. We have had no religious census in England for five-and-thirty years, but the Irish tables give forty-eight sects which only boast two members apiece, and another fifty whose congregations are all under twenty. The bill is principally designed in the interests of the five great Methodist bodies — the Wesleyans, the New Connexion, the Primitive Methodists, the Bible Christians, and the United Methodist Free Churches — all of whom possess extensive organizations, and, as it requires certain preliminary proceedings to be taken before the registrar, and a return under his hand to be given to the officiating minister, who must be registered, it is difficult to see whom the passing of this long-needed measure can prejudice.